Arthur Eddington - Science and the unseen world (1929)

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We have travelled far from the standpoint which identifies the real with the concrete. Even the older philosophy found it necessary to admit exceptions; for example, time must be admitted to be real, although no one could attribute to it a concrete nature.

Arthur Eddington
Objections to religious mysticism lose their force if they can equally be turned against natural mysticism.

Arthur Eddington
Matter and all else that is in the physical world have been reduced to a shadowy symbolism.

Arthur Eddington
Wind, earthquake, fire—meteorology, seismology, physics—pass in review, as we have been reviewing the natural forces of evolution; the Lord was not in them. Afterwards, a stirring, an awakening in the organ of the brain, a voice which asks "What doest thou here?"

Arthur Eddington
The scientific answer is relevant so far as concerns the sense-impressions... For the rest the human spirit must turn to the unseen world to which it itself belongs.

Arthur Eddington
Study of the scientific world cannot prescribe the orientation of something which is excluded from the scientific world.

Arthur Eddington
Ninety-nine people out of a hundred have not seriously considered what they mean by the term "exist" nor how a thing qualifies itself to be labelled real.

Arthur Eddington
Our environment may and should mean something towards us which is not to be measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.

Arthur Eddington
We should not argue with the blind man who maintained that sight was an illusion to which some abnormal people were subject. Therefore in speaking of religious experience I do not attempt to prove the existence of religious experience...

Arthur Eddington
We have to build the spiritual world out of symbols taken from our own personality, as we build the scientific world out of the symbols of the mathematician.

Arthur Eddington
The mind has an outlook which transcends the natural law by which it functions.

Arthur Eddington
The chairs and tables around us which broadcast to us incessantly those signals which affect our sight and touch cannot in their nature be like unto the signals or to the sensations which the signals awake at the end of their journey.

Arthur Eddington
Materialism in its literal sense is long since dead.... It is... belief in the universal dominance of scientific law which is nowadays generally meant by materialism.

Arthur Eddington
The problem of experiences is not limited to the interpretation of sense-impressions.

Arthur Eddington
However closely we may associate thought with the physical machinery of the brain, the connection is dropped as irrelevant as soon as we consider the fundamental property of thought—that it may be correct or incorrect.... that involves recognising a domain of the other type of law—laws which ought to be kept, but may be broken.

Arthur Eddington
If God is as real as the shadow of the Great War on Armistice Day, need we seek further reason for making a place for God in our thoughts and lives? We shall not be concerned if the scientific explorer reports that he is perfectly satisfied that he has got to the bottom of things without having come across either.

Arthur Eddington
You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.

Arthur Eddington
Our story of evolution ended with a stirring in the brain-organ of the latest of Nature's experiments; but that stirring of consciousness transmutes the whole story and gives meaning to its symbolism. Symbolically it is the end, but looking behind the symbolism it is the beginning.

Arthur Eddington
Scientific theories have blundered no doubt in the past; they blunder no doubt today; yet we cannot doubt that along with the error there come gleams of a truth for which the human mind is impelled to strive.

Arthur Eddington
It is probably true that the recent changes of scientific thought remove some of the obstacles to a reconciliation of religion with science; but this must be carefully distinguished from any proposal to base religion on scientific discovery. For my own part I am wholly opposed to any such attempt.

Arthur Eddington
Nature made nearly every possible mistake before she reached her greatest achievement, Man — or perhaps some would say her worst mistake of all.

Arthur Eddington
In science as in religion the truth shines ahead as a beacon showing us the path; we do not ask to attain it; it is better far that we be permitted to seek.

Arthur Eddington
In the beginning was vastness, solitude and the deepest night. Darkness was upon the face of the deep, for as yet there was no light.

Arthur Eddington
I have said that the science of the visible universe starts with a determination to use our eyes; but that does not mean that the primary use of the eye is for advancing science.

Arthur Eddington
Dismiss the idea that natural law may swallow up religion; it cannot even tackle the multiplication table singlehanded.

Arthur Eddington
In the vast expanse of the heavens the traffic is so thin that a star may reasonably count on travelling for the whole of its long life without serious risk of collision. The risk is negligible for any individual star; but ten thousand million stars in our own system and more in the systems beyond afford a wide playground for chance.

Arthur Eddington
I think it is not irreligion but a tidiness of mind, which rebels against the idea of permeating scientific research with a religious implication.

Arthur Eddington
Our system of philosophy is itself on trial; it must stand or fall according as it is broad enough to find room for this experience as an element of life.

Arthur Eddington
As truly as the mystic, the scientist is following a light; and it is not a false or an inferior light.

Arthur Eddington
We do not want a religion that deceives us for our own good.

Arthur Eddington